Ban Political Correctness

Apr 18, 2007

RUSH: As I predicted, as I warned you all yesterday, gun control has become the central theme of the Drive-By Media after the tragedy here, the massacre at Virginia Tech. By the way, speaking of something that we were just talking about, this guy was sending out clear warning signs that he was not right, and nobody would do anything about it on the campus. I mean, they sent him to counseling. They don’t know how that went. He might have been taking anti-depressants. We don’t know what the effect of that was. He went to some institution for a while. We don’t know how that went. We also have just learned that the guy’s writings, which we did know about, but what we just learned is that the guy’s writings were so scary that there were people that refused to go to his class. They refused to actually go in the classroom when this guy was there. So there clearly were all kinds of warning signs about this that were not heeded in a serious way. As I say, it’s very easy to start running around saying, ‘Well, ban guns! It’s the GOP’s fault. It’s Bush’s fault! Get rid of the NRA,’ rather than actually deal with what circumstances people had known for years prior to this guy committing this random act.

By the way, I think the Democrats heard me. Dingy Harry’s out there saying, no, we can’t start talking about gun control now. ‘Let’s Not Rush to Gun Control,’ is the headline of the story on Dingy Harry. There’s no question the Democrats are. The Drive-By Media didn’t, but the Democrats did. I want to explore something entirely different than banning guns, and that would be a ban on political correctness. You people (and you know who you are), I’m getting e-mails from you, some of you have called, and you’re lamenting the ‘soft structure’ of the American child these days, the American young person. ‘Why didn’t they gang tackle this guy? Why didn’t they just overpower this guy once he started firing!’ Everybody’s got their theories, and one of the most common theories that I’m hearing in my e-mail and on the phones here is that, ‘Come on, Rush! From kindergarten on they’re taught conflict resolution. ‘Don’t offend anybody. Don’t make anybody mad, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.’ Well, what is that if not political correctness,’ and it may be a factor. You don’t really know. But let me put it to you in the form of a series of questions.

What might have had a better chance of preventing the carnage on the campus of Virginia Tech, a law banning guns (which they had; that was a gun-free zone) or a law banning political correctness? Well, I know what some of you are saying, ‘But, Rush! But, Rush! But, Rush! It was two guns,’ and by gosh, that’s true, folks, thanks for reminding me. There were two guns the guy had. But let me remind you, the killer was a senior. He was in that university for four years, and his mental state was not a secret. This university is an institution of higher learning. They have lecturers. They have advisors. They have teachers, professors, deans, and all these people have degrees, postgraduate degrees, doctorate degrees. Before he was in this university for four years he was in a high school, and before he was in the high school he was in the middle school. Now, even now, we are just beginning to learn some of the warning signs, the flares. These were not ‘signs.’ This guy was sending up flares, and didn’t anybody notice? Was everybody so concerned with the trumped-up global warming scare they didn’t notice a real threat, for example?

How about this: the guy’s Korean. He’s Asian. How many people refused to do anything about it or even complain about him because they would be tagged as racists? And not just because he’s Korean, but he’s a minority. How many people in our school system, from kindergarten on up through senior year in high school and all that, have been — by virtue of political correctness — told you don’t comment on people who are in a minority, no matter what they’re doing? You’re going to be called bigoted. You’re going to be called prejudiced. Worse, you might even be called a racist! So I wonder how many of the students at this campus live in daily fear of global warming because of what is no doubt being taught there and on every other college campus. That’s a trumped-up scare, and they don’t even notice a real threat. Well, it’s hard to say that because somebody, a lot of people noticed something wrong with this guy, whether that equaled a threat to them? Well, we know that it did with some because they refused to go to the class where he submitted all these writings. You do not have to be a talk show host, you don’t have to be a conservative or a Republican or a moderate to ask this: How is it that we have outlawed standards of behavior?

Where is our sense of community and civic responsibility? Has all that has held our society together been swept away by political correctness? You might have some people say, ‘Come on, Rush! You can’t say this about us! He was just doing his own thing and they didn’t want to invade his space. He’s Asian. We didn’t want any civil rights lawsuit. If we singled him out for aberrant behavior, where would it stop?’ So this is the paralysis caused by political correctness. But the fault, my friends, lies in ourselves not in a gun shop, not in a gun, not in a hall of Congress, House or Senate, not in Washington. It’s easy to say that we need more gun laws, but what’s not so easy to say is that we need less political correctness, and we need a lot more return to some sensible values that exist. You know, one of tenets of political correctness is you can’t judge anybody. You can’t judge ’em even when you know that there’s something wrong with them. You can’t offend ’em. You can’t offend ’em. So what do you do? You just don’t go to class when this guy shows up with his wacko writings. You do your best to send him to an institution, get him on some drugs, but even at that, you can’t offend and you don’t judge. You just leave people alone. It’s none of your business, and this sort of thing, and this leads to paralysis, which is one of the many things that we had at Virginia Tech earlier in the week.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I just finished a brilliant monologue on the concept of banning political correctness for the good of our kids and the good of our society. I want you to listen to this montage here of NBC’s Meredith Vieira, Wolf Blitzer and a psychotherapist Caryn Stark, Chris Matthews of Hardball. (I still wonder if he’s going to resign and let a minority take his position at MSNBC. Remind me to bring that up, because I’m thinking of running a poll at RushLimbaugh.com: Who at MSNBC should resign to allow a minority to have a primetime show? In fact, we are going to do that. I’ll give you the choices here in just a second.)

So we’ve got Matthews. We’ve got Brian Williams. We’ve got a forensic psychologist, Dr. Helen Morrison, and Larry King, and they’re weighing in on the very thing we’ve been talking about. The profile of this guy, the shooter, and the warning signs were all there. Listen to these frustrated questions from the Drive-By Media types and the psychotherapists.

MEREDITH VIERA: Is there a profile for someone who would do something like this?

WOLF BLITZER: It seems like the classic profile.

PSYCHOTHERAPIST CARYN STARK: He’s a loner which fits the profile.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: What do you do when you have a kid that looks like a profile who might go on a rampage?

BRIAN WILLIAMS: The classic profile of a loner that exhibited trouble, isn’t that a trend now that deserves more resources?

HELEN MORRISON: We see the typical profile of a mass murderer!

LARRY KING: Is there anyway to spot before? Can we profile this type of person?

RUSH: How does this happen? They all end up asking the same question: ‘Can we profile?’ Can you imagine if this guy was Islamic? Would we be asking the question? Now they want to profile Asian-Americans. Now they want to profile people that they think can be identified as people who are going to go out and shoot 32 people in one morning. I’m telling you, that can’t be profiled. I don’t care what these people say, it doesn’t happen enough. You can’t profile somebody’s going to do that? Just because they’re a loner, just because they play video games, just because they have a gun? All these things may add up, but the thing you profile is he was a nutcase! They’re all asking, ‘Is there something we can profile?’ Yes, it was all over. The guy was screaming! What’s the thing the left says? ‘It was a desperate cry for help.’ (interruption) What, Mr. Snerdley? What’s the question? You’re interrupting me here in a brilliant riff. It better be a good question. Mmm-hmm. That’s exactly what I’m saying! We can’t profile them if they kill 3,000.

We can’t profile the Islamofascists. No, no, no! We can’t profile them even in the Transportation Safety Authority. You go through the metal detectors, and you can’t profile them in there. No! Your little grandmother might get wanded. Your six-year-old might get wanded. You might have to give up your shaving cream or whatever, but no! The same people who agree that we shouldn’t be profiling Islamofascists now want to profile people like this. There was a profile. Nobody paid any attention to it in a serious fashion. Nobody paid attention. They tried to give him drugs and they sent him to the funny farm and all, but nobody did anything about getting him off campus. So that’s why I say it’s so easy to start talking about guns. These guys don’t know how they’re undercutting their own argument. What are they saying? Are they asking, ‘Isn’t there a way to profile a madman with a gun?’ (Laughing.) These people are so out of it. They don’t even realize how they set themselves up for people like me. Where were these same questions after 9/11? In fact we’ve gone just the opposite. We can’t profile them at all.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: David in Columbia, Mississippi, hello, sir. Welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: Greetings from Katrina-ravaged south Mississippi.

RUSH: Right, sir, yes.

CALLER: You made a point about gun control’s impotence, another law not being relevant, and Columbine, what, 53 gun laws were violated, and that wouldn’t have mattered. This guy had chains and locks. He could have had a five gallon can of gasoline would have done a lot of damage.

RUSH: Of course. I made that point yesterday. Fertilizer and so forth blew up the Murrah Building, but this guy filed the serial numbers off the gun, too. It clearly indicates a criminal intent.

CALLER: Right. You know, you had made the point about folks not being prepared. You know, before the 9/11 hijackings, people weren’t ready for that. After 9/11 they wouldn’t have put up with people trying to take over the airplane. Same thing about Virginia Tech today. I doubt somebody would be able to do something like that. We did have Columbine, though. We did have a precedent about schools being attacked. Your point about political correctness is only really semi-tongue-in-cheek. For instance, one of the guys — one of the victims — was an Eagle scout, and he was trained to keep his head. He was shot in the leg and it ruptured his femoral artery, and if he hadn’t have kept his head, he would have bled to death, but he was able to stanch the bleeding and tie his leg up with electrical cord while —

RUSH: Wait a minute.

CALLER: — people were being shot.

RUSH: I’m gonna have to take a break here. I’m going to hold you through the break.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: I want you to get to what you called about.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Because I thought I could squeeze you in, in a minute and a half —

CALLER: Okay.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Back to David in Columbia, Mississippi. All right, where were you headed with this, the Eagle Scout and the shootings?

CALLER: Right. My point is that people, American citizens, can be trained to react under pressure or in an emergency. This guy was trained in a voluntary organization. It doesn’t require a lot of extra work. If they would just have a portion of emergency preparedness in a government class.

RUSH: Wait a minute. You’re not talking emergency service training like paramedics.

CALLER: No.

RUSH: You’re talking about, in this case, the students who are watching this guy shoot the gun, learn what to do to stop him?

CALLER: Yeah, keep their heads. I mean, obviously you can’t train them to be commandos, but you can train people to keep their heads and think logically. What if somebody had just tossed a big heavy chair or something?

RUSH: You know, we have generation after generation of political correctness that we would have to somehow erase from people’s minds to do this. Look, I understand what you’re saying, and this seems to be a budding theme out there that we need to do something here to get people to toughen up in these circumstances, average citizens who are involved in whatever these events happen to be, rather than just sit around, wait, or run away. I want to take you back to Columbine. You remember after the Columbine massacre, the Clinton administration mounted this huge push for new gun control, and it was crushed, and do you remember (I doubt that many of you will remember this) what the given reason was, the conventional wisdom on why the two Columbine shooters did what they did? I will tell you. We were told that they were ‘teased.’ Those two boys were teased and laughed at and made fun of by their classmates, and from now on we should be careful of that sort of behavior, because if we start teasing people and making fun of them, and making them outcasts, then they might act on some of the movies they see, or video games they play, or the television shows that they watch and so forth.

So let’s extrapolate that and move forward here to Virginia Tech. How would it manifest itself? ‘Well, don’t call this Cho guy a nut. Don’t point him out to others. Don’t say, ‘Ooh, this guy is a wacko!’ Just, shh! Shhh! He might explode! This guy might blow up. Let’s just don’t go to class when he’s there.’ Except the problem is, he did explode. We don’t know whether he was teased or not, but this is an outgrowth of political correctness: don’t tease them. Of course, what is the real meaning of this? When you came up with this conventional wisdom, ‘Those boys were being teased! They were made to feel like outcasts.’ In the process of doing that, you — in a way, you — justify their actions. ‘Well, yeah, what do you expect them to do? They put on those long black coats. They grabbed their machine guns. They went on this shooting spree! What do you expect them to do? They spent their whole youth being laughed at, made fun of. Girls wouldn’t go out with them on dates! They made fun of their acne and pimples and zits and so forth.’ That is how this political correctness is justified, because you then come out, and you justify what they did because of the actions and behaviors of others, regardless whether it’s mass murder or is the commission of a bank robbery or something like that.

That’s where political correctness has taken us — and, of course, the umbrella under all this, ‘Don’t offend anybody. Don’t insult them, and don’t, don’t, don’t make them mad! They might go nuts.’ They’re going to go nuts anyway at some point, and it’s not because they’re being laughed at or made fun of. They’ve got something wrong with them, which was clearly evident in this guy’s case. Check the timing on this. This hit last night about nine o’clock: ‘Authors of a new comprehensive analysis of antidepressants for children and teenagers say the benefits of treatment trump the small risk of increasing some patients’ chances of having suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The risk they found is lower than the one the Food and Drug Administration identified in 2004, the year the agency warned the public about the drugs’ risks in children.’ So you can sit there and you can say, ‘Well, yeah, they might get suicidal, but that’s a small risk compared to what might happen.’ I only bring this up because we were told this guy was prescribed anti-depressants. I don’t know if he took them or not.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is David from parts unknown in Pennsylvania. Welcome to the EIB Network, sir.

CALLER: Hello, Rush. This is a privilege.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I think you hit the nail on the head again with implying that political correctness is causing paralysis to action. I teach, and we’ve noticed recently that students do not participate in class, and this is at a bunch of colleges, and we actually think that perhaps political correctness has gotten them in the situation that any time they open their mouth, they’re afraid they’re going to get dumped on.

RUSH: Or they’re going to offend somebody or they’re going to make somebody mad and that’s going to lead to them getting dumped on.

CALLER: That’s right, and I think it is a very good idea that you hit that nail on the head. I think you’re right on target.

RUSH: Thank you very much. I appreciate that. In case you missed this, about an hour and a half ago I posited a theory that rather than ban guns we need to ban political correctness. We just need to get rid of it! It leads to paralysis. It leads to fear, and it leads to people not being who they are. I’ll give you a couple of examples of it. These are true stories. London’s Sunday Times: Headline: ‘Don’t Stare at Muslims, Says Advice to Schools — Pupils and teachers have been told by an official body not to stare at Muslims for fear of causing offense. A document intended to educate against religious intolerance and sectarianism urges teachers to ‘make pupils aware of the various forms of Islamophobia — i.e., stares, verbal abuse, physical abuse.’ Osama Saeed, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, accused officials of going too far. ‘There are far more serious elements of Islamophobia. People look at all sorts of things — that can just be a glance. A glance and a stare are two different things — glances happen naturally when all sorts of things catch your eye whereas a stare is probably gawking at something. Personally I have not encountered much of a problem with people staring. I don’t know how you legislate for that.”

That’s not going to stop them! Good for him for speaking out, but this is not going to be stopped. I’m just telling you that the pupils and teachers, they will continue to be told: ‘Don’t stare at Muslims! It might incite them.’ Then, try this. This was Tuesday in a different paper. This is the UK Telegraph: ‘Don’t Stare at the Apes, Zoo Tells Visitors — Most people visit the zoos to see the animals, but visitors to Antwerp Zoo in Belgium are being told not to look at the apes. Here’s why. Visitors are now confronted with signs telling them that making prolonged eye contact with the apes leaves the apes sad and withdrawn. Zoo staff reckon staring can result in a creature’s becoming less sociable.’ ‘Multiculturalists usually claim to be respecting people from different cultures, while in fact treating them with a decided lack of respect,’ that’s the conclusion of James Taranto at BestoftheWeb.com. So two different days, two different UK newspapers, say don’t stare at Muslims! No, that’s Islamophobia, and, don’t stare at the apes in a zoo because the apes will become sad and withdrawn. (interruption) Well, I don’t know if they’re crying out. How do you know if they’re crying out for attention? (interruption) Yeah, just wink at them. If you want to have eye contact with the apes, just wink at them. Why stop at the apes? Don’t wink, don’t stare at the tigers! Don’t stare at the lions. You could go even further. Don’t stare at your own pet! It might cause your own pet to become sad and withdrawn, might give your own pet an inferiority complex. These are the outgrowths of political correctness. I know it sounds funny, and it is, but these people are dead serious. There is insanity all over the place, and some of it is located in positions of power and authority all over our societies in Western democracies.

RUSH: Clyde in Boise, Idaho, welcome to the EIB Network, sir.

CALLER: Hello there? How are you?

RUSH: I’m good, sir, thank you.

CALLER: It’s good talking to you.

RUSH: You bet.

CALLER: Listen, I’ve been listening to you and I heard you talking about all the people that knew about this nutcase in Virginia and nobody did anything, and I want to know if you’d been one of the people that knew about it, exactly, directly, what would you have done? What could have been done ahead of time?

RUSH: You talking about the Virginia Tech situation?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Well, this is a question actually for the people in positions of authority there, and they did do certain things. They put him on anti-depressants, and they did send him to a mental institution in 2005, but none of that apparently had any impact or had any effect. I know what you’re getting at. You’re getting at — and it’s a valid point — was there really any way to stop these things? My only point in mentioning this is (don’t forget the context) everybody is saying, ‘We gotta ban the guns! We gotta get the guns out of there.’ There was all kinds of information long before the guy started pulling the trigger, that something wasn’t right with him, so banning the guns, that’s not the solution to this at all. It would have no impact whatsoever. In fact they already have banned guns on that campus, but this guy was able to go out and get one because the guy that sold him the gun didn’t know anything about him. The people at the school knew that something wasn’t right about this guy, and I don’t know what you do other than take him out of school and institutionalize him. His parents felt he was suicidal. There were all kinds of warning signs. What is your ultimate point with this? Have I touched on it?

CALLER: The ultimate point is, I’ve heard other talk shows say that people were remiss in not doing anything, and I’ve been associated with the courts enough to know that we can’t arrest a guy because some day he’s going to kill somebody.

RUSH: No, we’re not talking about that.

CALLER: There’s not a lot we can do about people like that.

RUSH: We’re not talking about — nobody is talking about — arresting him. We’re doing this in the context of either sequestering him or getting him some serious help. The talk of paralysis enters the fray, enters the picture when we start introducing the notion of political correctness. ‘Well, we don’t want to be critical because it might hurt his feelings. It might set him off.’

CALLER: Yeah, I understand that.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: I just wanted to know if you had a solution that — I mean if I’d have been there and knew this guy, there’s not much I could do, either, so I hear all the criticism about, ‘Why did everybody let this go on.’ Well, there’s not a whole lot in society that can be done.

RUSH: (sigh) Hmm. Trying to —

CALLER: We have the ACLU and attorneys and we got the Constitution, and we can’t just jump in and do something involuntarily on these people.

RUSH: Well, you know what? You’re inadvertently making the case for what people here are saying, because you’re going to have people like the ACLU come along if the school had tried to do anything to sequester the kid until he could have been properly analyzed and treated and so forth, he might have been able to get some ACLU lawyers… I don’t know. That’s speculation, too. You’re illustrating the problem at the same time you’re making a point. I had people e-mail me today, ‘Well, if we don’t get rid of the guns, are we just going to have an OK Corral every day?’ We don’t have an OK Corral in this country and we have all kinds of guns out there, video games and everything else. Thanks, Clyde.